International Animal Rescue: Three more lives saved

by Christine Nelson

The International Animal Rescue team in Indonesia has been under a lot of pressure with several urgent rescues coming hot on the heels of the well publicised translocations of four orangutans, stranded and starving in devastated forest.

The team was called to help help an orangutan who was getting dangerously close to humans due to habitat loss.  The rescue team traveled to Sukamaju, which is only about 30 minutes from the centre, and was able to capture the large but thin male.  After a short time of stabilisation, he was then translocated to a larger area of forest where our field team has reported seeing him again, but with a healthier body condition.

Sukma is wary but coping well with her new situation

The next week, two more  babies came under the team’s care.  The first, named Sukma, is more wild in nature and had been taken in by a man after he found her on a rambutan (fruit) plantation near a palm oil plantation.  She is about 4 years old and was too much for the man to handle, so IAR was called in.  There is no indication of what happened to her mother.  She remains very cautious of humans, but is doing fine in quarantine. 

Hopefully Gembar will soon be able
to join the other babies in the
forest enclosure

Gembar is the name of the second baby, aged about two and a half to three years old. She had been in the care of a family for one year.  They were out fishing one day and found her after she had supposedly been left by her mother – something we know to be very unlikely.  She had been receiving weekly baths, and was let out of her cage to play once a week as well.  Her diet was lacking in fruits and vegetables, and consisted mostly of milk, rice, and fish.  She is adjusting well and awaiting further medical checks.

The work carried by our project teams in the field is nothing short of heroic, and we are frequently amazed and awed by the lengths they go to protecting and rescuing orangutans, often putting themselves in tremendous danger themselves. Please show them your support!